Reviews

Oh Holy Fools

01/22/2001 | Other Music email update | Album Review

BRIGHT EYES / SON, AMBULANCE "Oh Holy Fools" (Saddle Creek) CD/LP
$12.99/$11.99
RealAudio: 64.27.65.90:8080/ramgen/othermusic/sonambu1.rm
RealAudio: 64.27.65.90:8080/ramgen/othermusic/brightI8.rm
A "split" short album where Bright Eyes and Son, Ambulance alternate songs. Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) works his way arduously through each of his songs with a unique, pained tremolo; Joe Knapp's voice is smoother, more tentative in comparison. Son,
Ambulance like light, jazzy rhythms, with piano and strings, and Bright Eyes jittery energy threatens to make things fall off (the entropy of vibrating a table while everything on it inches towards the edge...). I think Saddle Creek is putting these together to get
all those Bright Eyes fans to get into Son, Ambulance. It's likely to work, too. The energy levels sink on each successive song, so by the end each seem so wiped out by their efforts and emotion that you could collapse in pure empathy, then Bright Eyes ascend
into a great, extreme vortex of torment at the very end... [RE]
CD www.othermusic.com/perl-bin/OM/CD_Add_To_Cart.cgi?sku=64840100342&refer_url=email
LP www.othermusic.com/perl-bin/OM/CD_Add_To_Cart.cgi?sku=09999148211&refer_url=email